National Collegiate Athletic Association

NCAA News Archive - 2008

Anna Maria has a new logo, along with new athletics teams and facilities.

Jul 22, 2008 8:47:44 AM

The NCAA News

Anna Maria has undergone what school representatives are terming a “makeover” in its athletics department, adding sports, upgrading facilities and creating a new logo.

It’s part of a broader strategic plan at the college, which also is adding residence halls and academic facilities.

With five new teams -- men’s and women’s tennis this fall, men’s and women’s lacrosse next spring and the school’s new football program beginning next year -- Anna Maria is boosting its sports sponsorship to 15 varsity sports.

To support those new programs, the school is renovating and expanding its Fuller Activities Center to include a new fitness center with what the school describes as “state-of-the-art” exercise equipment. The work, due for completion next month, will result in new locker rooms, equipment and training areas, meeting rooms, office space and intramurals areas, as well as a refurbished gymnasium floor featuring the school’s new athletics logo at center court.

Anna Maria also is building a multipurpose stadium with a synthetic turf field, lights, seating, press box and scoreboard, for its football, field hockey, soccer and lacrosse teams.

Haverford is honoring a long-time coach and administrator with a new FieldTurf surface that will host field hockey and lacrosse competition and provide a practice site for other college varsity teams.

Dana Swan Field is named for the founder of Haverford’s men’s lacrosse team and also a former football coach and athletics director who retired in 2002 as the school’s associate director of admissions.

Swan Field is part of Haverford’s Douglas B. Gardner ’83 Integrated Athletic Center. “Our new FieldTurf surface will enable our student-athletes to train and to compete in a facility constructed to support their quest for excellence,” said Wendy Smith, the school’s athletics director.

The field will be equipped with lights, and is slated for completion by September 1.

Another Trials finalist

A former student-athlete and current member of the coaching staff at Concordia (Wisconsin) was among several other Division III student-athletes who fared well at the recent U.S. Olympic Trials to select the nation’s track and field team for the Beijing Olympics.

Amanda Kuca Lorenzen, who holds the Division III Women’s Outdoor Track and Field Championships record in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, qualified for the final in that event at the Trials and finished seventh with a personal record time.

Lorenzen was Division III’s female track athlete of the year in 2006 after winning the steeplechase at that year’s championships. She currently is assistant cross country and track and field coach at Concordia.

“At this point in my running career, I was very happy with my seventh-place finish in the Olympic Trials,” she said. “I will continue to train with my coach and hopefully improve and finish even higher in four years with a chance to run in the 2012 London Olympics.”